Strands of Genius: Faris x Liquid Death, What Your Groceries Say, Slides are Cool
Strands of Genius: Faris x Liquid Death, What Your Groceries Say, Slides are Cool
Plus: Tiny Awards, a real life Aladdin and porch appreciations
WRITING FROM | Chattanooga, TN
WORKING ON | New deck design for one of our presentations, finishing touches on our porch out back
LOOKING AHEAD
July 29-Aug 13 | Chattanooga, TN
Aug 15-18 | Charlotte, NC
Aug 18-?? | Chattanooga, TN
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Rosie, here! I’m writing from our screened in porch, in our wild backyard. It’s become my coffee shop (though the water hook up hasn’t been finished, so it’s BYOC at the moment), my yoga studio, my office, and my pottery play-space. I’ve got my desk facing the woods, a ceiling fan above me, and birds all around me. I have space where I can leave my pottery out and play my (ahem, mostly country) music loudly and not bother anyone 😅
Faris loves the downstairs at our house, because it’s much colder. He’s got his desk set up down there, and his PlayStation hooked up to the projector in the neighboring media room. Going downstairs really should come with a free ski suit. It’s CHILLY, y’all. We’ll set our thermostat upstairs to 73F and it will hover between 66 and 68F downstairs.
I’ve mostly been working from our kitchen island. I like the taller chairs and the central location, and even in Airbnbs kitchens have often been my preferred place to work, ha. But that means that my laptop and even pottery things end up being in a communal space. Fine for short periods of time, but both Faris and I prefer a clean house.
And, I’m loud. It’s feedback I’ve gotten from every roommate I’ve ever had. 🫣 I grew up with a dad in the music industry - I like to listen to music, and I like to listen to it loudly! (And sing along, because obviously.) Which is less ideal when someone is trying to work in the room below you. Headphones are great, but after a few hours, they hurt your ears. (Or is it just me?!)
Out here, the birds cheep along to Zach Bryan or Noah Kahan in a way that makes me think they like that particular song, or that they’re trying to sing along to it, or accompany my music in some way.
And then I pause and my logical brain goes, “that’s probably not really the case” but then I also think “But what if it wasn’t random?!” And then, “Even if it was just random, how lucky am I to have been sitting out here and happening to catch this particular moment in time?”
Sometimes I lose minutes to nature, just looking at all of the living things, and how different they are. I lose more minutes to rabbit holes like “is this kind of pokeweed an invasive species” and “is pokeweed good for anything” and “how aggressive is pokeweed” and “flower arrangements with pokeweed.” (For the record, I dug out the pokeweeds that were near the house, I’m letting some that are in the depth of the backyard stay because the birdies LOVE them, and the flower arrangements look dope too.)
My sisters and I have been back on the Marco Polo train and catching up, it’s clear that all three of us share an immense love of the outdoors. The more time we spend outdoors, the better our day. And with this screened in porch, I now get to spend the majority of my day outside, popping up to the house to use the bathroom or make some food. Faris still prefers the strong A/C downstairs, but he’ll come visit at least once a day — And we joke that as soon as the temperature out here drops below the temperature downstairs (66-68F), we’ll be trading places. (Or maybe I’ll just invest in a ski suit lol.
But, until then, I’m living in the moment and loving this outdoor life. I hope you’re all surviving or thriving in the summer heat, and finding some enjoyable ways to be outdoors as well :)
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
screened in porch life, trees, raccoons, our tomato and pepper plants, tilapia with lemon garlic mash, beet farro pilaf, Time Bandits, Palm Royale, Deadpool & Wolverine & YOU.
:: TINY AWARDS ::
Our dear friend Matt, author curator of the always excellent Webcurios newsletter, is hosting the TINY AWARDS for non-commercial, URL based creative web projects and entries are open until August 17th.
Judges include absolute legends like Kottke and Yancey Strickler (Fun side note: Rosie’s first speaking gig was on a bill with Yancey back in the day. Good dude.)
Tiny Awards exist to celebrate the personal internet, what we described last year as ‘the other web, the one that is small and handmade and isn’t trying to sell you anything or monetise anything but which instead is about people using the digital tools we all have access to to make the sorts of small, personal experiences that you tend not to see ‘in feed’’.
Enter now to be showered in tiny amounts of glory!
:: THE LINKS ::
WHAT YOUR GROCERY CART SAYS ABOUT YOU
Love the ethnography here. Looking at nearly 30 people’s grocery purchases over a month, the New York Times explores our relationship to food, and what we buy. I found this absolutely fascinating! (New York Times - Gift Link)
FARIS x LIQUID DEATH
Faris was delighted to get to do a podcast interview with an old buddy, Andy Peason, VP of Creative of Liquid Death for Mediacat. :‘One of the things we try and do is toe the line between “Is this thing real or not?” and “Oh my god, it is real”‘, Andy said. ‘We’re just a humour brand at our core’, he added, and ‘we cut counter to culture and marketing — ultimately we want to be an entertainment company’. (Mediacat) (Spotify Link, Apple Link)
SLIDES ARE COOL
Ok yes, this article says “PowerPoint” specifically, but those of us using Keynote know that’s where it’s at ;) When Faris and I lived in NYC — ummm now more than 10 years ago, wild — we had “deckaoke,” a kinda karaoke but with an existing presentation. You’d have no clue what your presentation was going to be on, or what slide was coming next, and it was SO. MUCH. FUN. So why are these kinds of “PowerPoint Parties” kicking off? For The Washington Post, Janay Kingsberry writes, “What makes PowerPoint a fun format for social activities is how easily the tool can be subverted, inspiring them to rewrite the rules of presentation etiquette and dream up NSFW topics that satirize the stuffy settings from which they originated.
The structural nature of PowerPoints (distilling research into short bullet notes and key findings) can also weed out some of the clumsy and awkward aspects of regular social conversation — where folks can stumble over words, lose their train of thought and excitedly talk over one another. With PowerPoint parties, it gives everyone the chance to have the floor without distractions or interruptions — save for the outbursts of cheers and laughter.” (Archive.org/Washington Post)(The Utter)
Want to chat, comment, question, compliment?
:: RANDOM, BUT : REAL LIFE ALADDIN?! ::
Speaking of Matt & Webcurios, it included this recently and and we were beyond baffled. A guy is cliff jumping but instead of using a wing suit, using some kind of real rug instead. HOW DOES THIS WORK?! (Or is it fake?!)
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
rockON,
faris & rosie | your friends over at geniussteals.co
(still want more? @faris is still “tweeting” while @rosieyakob prefers instagram stories)
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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. We have a distributed team ourselves, an accounting team is based in Tennessee where our company is registered, our admin extraordinaire is based in Playa del Carmen, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)